Dark Acausal Dreams

The Lengthy-Briefness of Dark Acausal Dreams

She – Eulalia – had visited him again in those long sleepless hours of his dreams when he lay fitfully in his bed as those late cold October nights drifted causally toward another crescent-mooned Dawn.

The dream – redolent of the acausal – had been long as such dreams often were in the normal world of that causal time that measured out each human day, and which yet in its lengthy acausal duration only a few moments of Earthly time had passed. So it was that Patterson awoke from its strange lengthy-briefness to feel more exhausted than on his previous day on Earth. She had come forth out of darkness as she always did to softly, gently, and nakedly lay upon him as he lay in his sweating nakedness within that large room of his otherwise deserted London house. She had kissed him, as she always in the lengthy-briefness of such nightly dreams kissed him: deeply, tongue touching tongue, while he almost always against his will became aroused, needing no hand – hers, or his – to guide his straining almost painful erection into her clinging moist welcoming warmness that brought such pleasure that he had to, vainly, fight against it. She would move, then, slowly, upon him as his body surrended and he eagerly embraced her: slowly moving until her, his, urgency of orgasm overcame him and they became passionately, rabidly, enmeshed until he, drained, was left, weak of relaxing body, to supinely lay as if drugged while his, and her effusive, bodily fluids slowly seeped forth from her vagina, and her kiss sucked his life, his very human essence, away, to leave him as a corpse paler and gaunter than it would have been even if all the blood and plasma within had been somehow drained away, but as a corpse that was somehow still mysteriously and yearningly, longingly, half-alive.

But that night she was, so very slightly, so very disturbingly, different in the first moment of that life-draining kiss when it was to him as if she had somehow changed to be, to become – ever so fleetingly – some-thing else, not quite human and certainly not the beautiful, delectable, sensuous, exotic, voluptuous young women who enticed and then so passionately in those dreams aroused him, and who increasingly in his wakeing hours unwelcomely occupied both his emotions and his thoughts.

Thus did he awake that cold almost frost-like morning to lay a long time in his empty sweat-damp bed as, outside, in a London street, people busied themselves with the beginning of their day, oblivious to the darkness which had seeped through dimensions and which they were and would be powerless before. Patterson’s house had long ago been emptied of his wife and children, leaving him in its secluded large quietness to concentrate upon his cherished military career, and when – irregularly – they did return to visit he was never quite sure whether his pleasure at their company, their presence, outweighed his rather gruff annoyance. For it never long before he and his former wife began to quarrel.

Thus did he lay, that quiet morning, even more disturbed by Eulalia than normal, trying to – and failing – to recall that briefest of brief moments when she had changed to be, to become, some-thing, not quite human. So he lay, still, suffused again, as he often had become in the days of the last fastly passing week, with a memory, a feeling, of her enticing, enwrapping, soft feminine warmth, and he had to use all his strength of character, all the years of his military training and life, to will such memories and such feelings away, and for a moment, a long seemingly long-lasting moment, he was alternatively disgusted then pleased then yearning then disgusted with himself as a sudden intense sexual desire for her overcame him. Thus did he that cold morning in that cold room leap up from his bed to undertake a series of demanding physical exercises, and it was this – this hard routine of training – that brought him back to be the man he was, an experienced Army officer sworn to do his patriotic duty.

Yet he could not escape her presence, that day, for not only did she linger on – enticing, bewitching – in his thoughts and memories and feelings, she was also the subject of an hours long meeting as he, Cheddon, Beldan and their senior Civil Servant, gathered together again in that windowless room of the low ceiling in Whitehall.

They were discussing the events of only the week before when Eulalia’s primal Dark Entities had sallied forth, among humans, bringing such terror and such a deadly carnage, when, quite suddenly, all that Patterson could feel, all that subsumed his thoughts, was a desire to be with her, again. He would reach out, and touch her: feel the warmth of her face; touch the softness of her breasts; smell again that haunting exotic perfume which so suffused her…

“Er, Patterson?” Cheddon was saying.

“What?” Patterson said, somewhat annoyed at being disturbed from his sexual reverie. Then, remembering – feeling again – who he was, he said: “Say again?”

“I was remarking,” Cheddon continued as the screen behind him glowed with a paused image from filmed footage of a heap of corpses, “that the alien theory is now the most plausible one.”

“Yes. At least for the moment. It’s certainly a more plausible hypothesis than what some of the loonies who’ve contacted the government have come up with. Demons, indeed!” And he laughed, not loud, but somewhat quietly, as a rather shy, awkward, ageing University Professor might laugh at some absurd theory propounded by a new young student

“The important and pressing issues,” the senior Civil Servant said, interrupting, and fiddling with his colourful silk tie-of-the-day, “are what can we do in a practical way to counter them, and what, if any, are their demands.”

“Well,” said Patterson, reverting to his role of Army officer, “our conventional weapons such as firearms do not seem effective against them, as was demonstrated in York. They seem to have the ability, by whatever means, to transport themselves somewhere else, so that we cannot, it seems, contain nor detain them. Twice, they have lured us a specific locality, then escaped, in my opinion just to demonstrate that they could escape, despite our best efforts, and to demonstrate that they are prepared for whatever tactics we might use.”

“So, just what do we do? What can we do?” Cheddon asked.

“What I said,” Patterson replied, looking at the senior Civil Servant “at the briefing with the PM last week.”

“And for the benefit of the those two of us who were not there?” Beldan asked, with a slight undertone of annoyance at having been excluded from that meeting.

“We can do two things,” Patterson replied. “First, we can ready and deploy other weapons, apart from conventional firearms, such as high-powered lasers, tazers, ultrasonics, or whatever else we have or can speedily develop. We might find one type of weapon which is effective. I have spent the last week building up a specialist team which has acquired some of the weapons that might be useful.”

“And second?” Beldan asked.

“Secondly, we can wait. It is my considered opinion that was has occurred so far are only demonstrations. Demonstrations of what they can do. Nothing has happened for over a week. Why? Because, in my view and that of some of my senior colleagues in the Armed Forces, they are allowing us time to come to terms with the reality, which is of our current ineffectiveness in dealing with and with tracing them, and in seeing how much of the truth we – that is, the government – reveals to the public, which so far has not been very much and is of the standard attacks by terrorists Party political line.”

“So you expect them to contact us, directly?” Beldan asked.

“Almost certainly,” Patterson said. “And, if I am not mistaken, very soon indeed.”

“Saying what?” Cheddon asked.

“Giving us their demands.”

“Which will be what, exactly?” Beldan asked.

“Well,” the senior Civil Servant said, smiling somewhat nervously, “we’ve had a team of analysts working on that for the past few days.”

“And?” Beldan inquired.

“And – ” Patterson interjected, “the upshot is we simply do not know, but in all probability it will be for some kind of power, or for resources, or possibly even for living-space.”

“Lebensraum,” Cheddon said. “Interesting!”

“So we just sit and wait, then?” Beldan said.

“It does seem so,” the senior Civil Servant said.

“It is their move – her move – in this game that’s being played,” replied Patterson, and almost smiled.

“I’d hardly call it a game,” Cheddon sighed, “So many deaths…”

“It is to them,” Patterson calmly said.

So it was that they sat there, in that windowless room of the low ceiling, in silence for many moments, each enwrapped in and with their own feelings and thoughts, and so it was with only polite words between them that that meeting ended to leave Patterson, Beldan and Cheddon to be ferried in a vehicle, escorted by armed guards, back to their sanctuary in the basements of some large secret government city building where they each returned to their tasks as a warmless Sun rose above the streets and buildings of that city and into a cloudless sky.

Patterson was in the small room of inward corridor-looking windows which had become his office and communications centre when Eulalia appeared, to sit calmly on one end of his desk as he busied himself at another with reading, on the screen of one of his communications consoles, the technical specifications of some ultrasonic device. He knew she was there, but he pretended not to notice and so did not turn around.

“Some privacy, I think,” and, as Eulalia – resplendent in a long flowing dress as if for some formal Ball – moved her left hand ever so slightly, the inward-window blinds came down, quietly, quickly, to close to leave them secluded in the bright artificial light of that room, and she smiled at him as he rose from his chair to stand before her.

“You have arrived here to present us with your demands,” he said, as an honourable Army officer might to an unforgiving ruthless enemy.

“To offer you a position, an opportunity. Destiny,” she softly replied, standing in front of him and touching his face with her hand.

He tried to raise his arm to push her hand away but it would not obey the command of his thought, and it seemed as if she was about to kiss him when she suddenly, and gracefully, stepped back.

“What you so desire can be yours, but only if you desire it freely,” she said. “And it would be no night-time dream.”

Her quixotic perfume seemed to envelope him, heightening the desire that then subsumed him with its lengthy-briefness, but he resisted sufficiently enough to be able to say, “Why?”

“Why must you freely desire or why the opportunity?” she teased.

“What opportunity?” and even as he said the words it was as if, somehow and in some strange un-human way, he had known her for years; as if she was his wife, come to visit unexpectedly but pleasingly at work; the wife so desired and dreamed of during those bachelor years of early Army life and even, to his hidden shame, through a decade of that one quarrelling now broken marriage when he, his career assured, rapidly earned promotion by virtue of talent, skill, and personal character.

He tried then to tell himself that she was not human – she was the enemy, his foe – but she came forward and touched his face again, gently, with her warm hand, and, enwrapped in impossible desire, he kissed her. She was warm, soft, yielding – human – pressing her breasts, her thighs, her public area, against him until he was ripping away her dress to reveal her nakedness and eagerly, almost stumblingly, removing his own lower garments. They were on the floor, then, rabidly enmeshed together for almost one half of one Earthly causal hour until his whole body spasmed in an intense orgasm of ecstasy to leave him drained, with relaxing sweaty body, to feel her strangely effusive bodily fluid, now mixed with his, slowly warmly seeping forth from her warm sensuous vagina.

He seemed to sleep, briefly, then, and when he awoke he so expected to find her gone, or it all a dream. He had fallen asleep at his console, perhaps. Or it was a dream within a dream and he would awake, in his bed in the secluded large quietness of his large London house, bereft now of children and of wife. But Eulalia was there, naked, in his arms, bubbled in acausal Time, as outside beyond his working office, human life, all Earthly-dwelling life, lived, frozen, until her own distant-close Mistress freed it from that stopped, paused, moment of that lengthy-briefness which marked the causal passing of that measuring meddling noisey Earth-dwelling species, Homo Hubris.

But Patterson did not know this, and lay with her allowing her body warmth to warm him. For he was still alive, warm, healthy and fit and strong of body, and she had not sucked the life from within him as in those nightmares of his nights. So he touched her, feeling every softness, every contour of her warm lascivious sensuous female human body.

Thus did she then explain to him – thought to thought without a need for human spoken words – as they lay, nestled, there together, touching, and thus did he feel and know until the Earthly-time for her momentary leaving arrived when he, she, together stood, to dress, and he thought he saw some sadness in her eyes. He understood, then, as she had hoped he would understand just as his intense passionate lustful desire for her was slowly, then, so slowly changing, transmuting, being transmuted to be, become, something else as she knew – hoped – it would, despite a part of his human nature still distantly valiantly fighting against her. For he was her chosen, and it was for him now to be alone – bereft of her, his longing and his dreams – to make the choice he alone must freely make.

Outside, clouds fastly skudded by cold north-easterly winds came to cover the Sun to send down, quickly amid a growing dark, a brief but powerful storm of hail before two peels of thunder drowned out the noises that Homo Hubris and their machines made, there, in that ancient, and capital, English city whose river flowed as it flowed over where those hunters of humans rested, and waited, ready, in their lairs.

^^^

There was much that Rezare – she of the long greying hair and still lithesome body – wanted to do, as her group gathered around her in their protective drawn circle there on that low mound of muddied grass where a few almost forgotten almost overgrown ancient small standing stones rested, broken, or fallen, just before the covering of deciduous trees gave way to an ancient well. There was no Moon, as she desired – no warmth from a warm Summer’s night – but the urgency of the matter had brought them together to be there at that hour as she, their Rounwytha, had urged. There was a darkness growing, seeping, into the land, the people, the very landscape that she loved – reaching out with its demon dreams and its succubitic love to entrap, ensnare, entice – and although she did not, as yet, know its source, she felt, knew, that her wyrdful-rouning must oppose it.

Thus did she and her group – six men, three woman, all far younger than she – wait in their white clean robes for the rouning to begin, and thus did she, as Rounwytha, lisp, in almost silence, old words of her craft while a slight wind brought coldness, and sound by leaves fallen, befeallen.

But the more she tried, the more tired she became, as if she – her very life, her essence – was being somehow strangely sucked away; as if the very trees themselves, around her, were reaching out to her venting slowly forth from branch and buried root a longing for her to leave them alone. She did not understand this – for were they not: her friends? Were they not the folk of the wood, the very wood itself, who once, many times, had spoken to her with wordless words on starry moonless moonlit nights while she listened and learnt and which each year her Mother-Earth so lovingly in Spring simbellicly renewed?

So she tried again, lisping forth again those ancient words. But the very earth beneath her, the living soil of Earth, then seemed to be seeping forth into her, colding her feet, her body, her head, as if seeking, asking, her to go, peacefully in peace. She did not understand this – for was this soil not her growthful friend which each year every year she nurtured forth in garden and gardens to grow ginningly the food that fed her and kept her fit, hearty, well? It was as if they – her friends of soil, wood, forest, and fieldful hill – sensed, knew, what she knew, and as if they welcomed that – were welcoming that: that so slow subtle un-human change which had so disturbed her both in daylight and in dreams.

Thus did she, sensitive, hyelding, try again to no avail, and thus did she, they – her covenful group, and at her bidding – leave, each in their own way by their own means, until she, by hillfull fields, was back alone in her cold small cottage only warm by that large wood-fire she lit and in front of which she sat, worn armchair rested, while her seal-point Siamese cat kept her company and nothing came to disturb the silence and worried sanctity of her mood. She fell asleep there – as the fire dimmed and fell, and hunger failed to wake her – to dream she was back alone by that ancient sacred hidden well where roots seeped forth from trees nearby to grasp her and earth, soil-ly earth, worm-ridden, opened to encase her in her tomb.

It was the scent, the quixotic, suffusive scent which awoke her, and the warm soft hands of some unseen presumed female presence which warmed her as she sat, quite still but unfearful in that colding dark. There were lips kissing hers: warm, soft, gentle lips which touched her own of dryness, unkissed for more than fifteen years. A touch which warmly, slowly, gently, caressed her – touching face, neck, body, the naked thighs beneath her robe-covered dress. And then it all was gone, all gone, to leave her, colourful of cheek with her legs apart, parted as an almost yearning straining hope touched her while that warm strange touch had caressed her thighs to move within an inch of where a sudden longing wetness seeped out to wet her greying pubic hairs.

Thus did she, ashamed, gather up her strength to slowly say the words of some protective ancient incantation there in that cold small cottage where her seal-point Siamese cat kept her company and where nothing human came to disturb the silence and worried sanctity of her now wytanic mood.

^^^

Patterson and his small cabal of Cheddon and Beldan – awaiting the arrival of the senior Civil Servant – had been in one of Beldan’s rather large and well-equipped brightly-lit laboratories in the well-guarded basements of that large city of London and government building, when he, perhaps, pre-emptively, had with vague-ish terms explained to them about Eulalia’s visit where he said she had given her demands.

Thus they had listened, in silence, as he himself, still vaguely perfumed with Eulalia’s scent – with each vague utterance of each vague often obscuring spoken word – formed, from each idea, each image, each future-deed precisely, wordlessly, livingly, almost lovingly impinged by her upon within his mind, his being, a bond with and to her, thus becoming more aware with each passing of each Earthy causal second of his choice, more assured of his choice, of the correctness of that now freely-chosen choice, bringing thus to him in those moments of his speaking a clear vision of Destiny and an intimation of how his life hitherto had fitted him for such a role as lived within him now, burgeoning, strongly growing with each silent felt remembrance of Eulalia’s breath: of her scent, softness, warmth, touch, sharing – blissfully shared but one short causal Earthly hour before.

It was not that he forgot or had forgotten or even was about to negate the loyalty, the feelings, that bound him through oaths pastly-made to be a loyal liege and thus to do his duty to his land, his country, and the government that still idealistically at least derived its own presumptive authority from one such similar oath. Rather, he understood his new duty as but an extension of – the fulfilment of – such things, restoring what required to be restored and bringing-into-being that, only that, which only could be built by such a means as he through such a Destiny would bring. And it was only when the senior Civil Servant arrived to seat himself between Cheddon and Beldan that he exchanged his vague words of description for the reality he felt now so joyously so fittingly living within himself, for she – Eulalia – would be with him again, naked in his arms for all of the coming night, as the Sun descended to bring a Wintry cold darkness over those lands of England that he, the long-serving patriotic professional soldier, loved.

“As I explained to Cheddon and Beldan here,” Patterson began, standing, and looking directly at the senior Civil Servant, “she was, somehow and by some means, here just over an hour ago – ”

Patterson ignored him. “The demands given are quite simple. In return for certain small concessions, and subject to certain conditions and assurances, the attacks will cease; the entities – not of them – that wrought all those deaths will be withdrawn, and we will be given certain technical assistance to develop new technologies which will be to the great advantage of Britain, to the government, to our people, and to our standing in the world.” He paused, as a professional politician might pause for effect while delivering a speech. Then, quite calmly, he said: “I am to act as her – as their – liaison. As her – as their – representative.”

Cheddon and the senior Civil Servant looked at each other, somewhat surprised, while Beldan only smiled.

“The main condition,” Patterson confidently continued, “is that of absolute and binding secrecy. No one – outside of the few of us who already know – can know either the truth of what has occurred, or of her, of their, involvement with us, current and future.

“The concessions relate to us providing them a secure area where they can live, in secret, and in us allowing some of them – a few of them – to dwell among us, undetected, with a few of those few to be given certain positions, within the government and our Armed Forces. In return for which – as I said – they will provide us with technical assistance to develop new technologies which will be to our great advantage.”

“Why?” Cheddon, inquired.”What do they really want?”

“A place to live – among us, in human form. To guide us; to help us develop what we need to develop, in terms of science and technology, so that we might spread out from this planet to be, to live, among the stars, and thus evolve as we have the potential to evolve. We, this country, our government, have been given this opportunity.”

“I still don’t get it,” Cheddon said.

“It seems to me,” Beldan replied, “that it is quite simple. They have a need, a desire, to dwell here, on Earth, and so are offering to come to an agreement, and arrangement, with us which is beneficial to both sides.”

Patterson looked at her strangely, as if there was, in that moment, something he felt he knew about her, but the feeling of such a knowing soon passed, and, instead, he said, to Cheddon, “That indeed is the gist of the matter. They want to aid us in the development of Space – and other technologies – so that they also can, with us, move back out toward the stars.”

“I see,” Beldan said, smiling at him. “So, it is logical to assume that these alien beings, or whatever we might call them, are somehow stuck here, for some reason as yet unknown to us, on this planet in our sector of this Galaxy, and require our assistance in order to resume their Space-faring ways.”

This was not what Patterson knew – not what Eulalia had shown him – but it would be, it would have to be, for the present, the best cover-story to use among those who already knew of her, and of her companions, existence.

“Any agreement,” Patterson answered, “is a matter of trust. In my considered opinion, yes, she – they – can be trusted.”

“Maybe. Perhaps. Possibly. For the moment. Possibly not. And if we don’t agree to their terms and conditions?” Cheddon asked.

“Then,” Patterson said, “the attacks will resume; those entities will wreck more havoc and death; and other countries will be targeted.”

“Not much of a choice, then,” said Beldan.

“What,” inquired the senior Civil Servant of Patterson, fiddling – as had become his habit – with his colourful silk tie, “in your professional opinion and that of your colleagues, are the possibilities of us succeeding now, or in the immediate future, in defeating this person and her forces?”

“As I explained to the PM recently, the consensus is – and I concur – that the possibility is remote. That it is, currently and in the immediate future, an unfeasible objective. We have neither the resources nor the means to achieve such an objective. Unless and until we can develop a means to track them, unless we can develop some weapon or weapons which are effective against them, our options, from a military point of view, are severely limited and currently ineffective. There is also a consensus that it would take some years for us to develop the capabilities we need to even be on a par with them.”

“I see,” the senior Civil Servant said.

“During which time, no doubt,” Beldan added, “there would be hundreds of thousands of deaths, maybe millions, world-wide – and a great deal of devastation and destruction.”

“What about the weapons you’ve been looking at recently?” asked Cheddon.

“They may or may not have some limited effect.

“Shouldn’t we try them out?” Cheddon asked

“We – my tactical team and I – have been ready to do so if a situation arose where such weapons might be deployed. But – ” and he paused, again. “My information is that such weapons as we currently possess will not be effective.”

“What information?” Cheddon inquired.

“I was directly informed…”

“By Eulalia?” interrupted Cheddon, guessing.

“Yes.”

“And you believed her?” Cheddon said, surprised.

“I have – had – no reason to doubt the veracity of her information. Indeed, she offered to give us a demonstration.”

“I see,” the senior Civil Servant said.

“We should put it to the test,” Cheddon added.

“I accepted her offer and have already made the arrangements.” He checked his wristwatch. “If you will follow me, we should be in position at exactly the right time.”

So he led them out from that brightly-lit well-equipped laboratory through a skein of corridors, passing many an armed and uniformed guard, to the large underground car-park that served their needs and that of the other occupants of those well-guarded government basements of that large city of London building. In one corner of that dismal grey underground area a tactical squad of soldiers waited in a semi-circle, holding a variety of weapons, regular, strange, and improvised, and – as Patterson’s quartet joined them – three women, all dressed in black, young and dark of hair with bright red lipstick upon their lips, suddenly materialized at the point which was the centre of that semi-circle of soldiers. The women were carrying guns which seemed to resemble standard Earth-manufactured semi-automatic pistols which they raised and pointed at the soldiers who also raised their own assortment of weapons but who did not fire. But the women simply smiled, and shot three soldiers dead.

Thus did the nine remaining soldiers fire or operate their weapons as the women stood, smiling and un-humanly still, making no attempt to shoot or even target their own hand-held guns. For five minutes they stood until Patterson gave orders for his men to cease their firing. No one spoke, or moved – except the three women, who unharmed came forward to kiss each still living speechless unmoving soldier on the cheek before those strange but attractive women turned, waved at Patterson, and were gone.

“I see your point,” Cheddon said, unnecessarily, to him.

^^^

It was not long before his suspicious, his doubts, grew. Not even the senior Civil Servant would listen to him when he hinted certain things. Certainly, Beldan was distant, disengaging, unapproachful, and so Cheddon carried on, in his own well-equipped, if dimly lit, laboratory in those well-guarded government basements of that large city of London building. Carried on, almost but not quite as normal. What could he say, do? So he busied himself with the new work that Patterson said was of vital and national import. Waiting, unsure; with only doubts, suspicious, unvoiced, unheard, almost always strange, unformed.

No longer the hunt for some enemy foe. No longer the sense, the knowing, the thrill, of being part of some elite, secret, well-armed, powerful, government team. Instead: he felt cheated, betrayed, perhaps even soiled. As if the deal they had made somehow besmirched, dishonoured, and shamed him. He did not understand why this was so, only that it felt so. Perhaps it was that he had betrayed the dead – the ones, the thousands, they had killed. Perhaps he had even betrayed himself. Perhaps it was fear of being taken, made-to-be like them. Or perhaps a feeling of being somehow their minion, their slave: as if he, humans, were powerless, weak, inferior, now before them. He did not know, and so he carried on: he, one of those chosen to closely guard their, and his governments, secret, doing – as the consummate talented professional he was – his newly given governmental duties outstandingly well, while secretly, furtively, working on some way to detect, defend against, them.

The day was bright, if cold, with a frost that the warmless middle November Sun did not nor would that day remove, and Rezare – she of the long greying hair, the lithesome body – sat in her old worn armchair by her warming large wood-fire reading from an antiquarian folio book, her seal-point Siamese cat asleep beside her in a wicker-basket. There was no sound, except the slight occasional wind-rapping of small bare Willow tendrils that hung down seepingly against her sitting room window from the overgrown tree in her Cottage garden, and she might have been at peace – happy, contended; contended, happy, warm – had not her dreams, her knowing, the very words of the book, disturbed her. For the words of that Diary, that Journal, flowingly, cursively, inscribed by hand, were of a Rounwytha before her who had through visions and dreams seen a certain uncertain dark future: sinister times where strange shapeshifting succubitic beings ventured forth to bring sadness, madness, terror, and awe; where They – though unnamed – use for their own ends human beings, establishing thus a Dark, sinister, Imperium upon Earth.

Thus did Rezare read what another of her kind had written, less than seventy years before:

“I, with the help of an old dear friend, have been able to find only scattered references, such as:

They require Earth as a Gate, a physical staging place, from whence they can go forth to dominate that life which exists among the stars, and because they desire again our human bodies – for, being formless as they are, eternal, they cannot feel as we feel; cannot love as we love; cannot feel the joy that we feel. For Aeons after Aeons they have lived formless and unfeeling and dreaming as such beings do. Once, long ago now, before we knew ourselves, before words came forth to be written, some of Them seeped to be among us, taking, as legend says, human shape human. Some stayed, most returned. Perhaps it was that the tales of those returning, tales of our life – of their time of physical form – enchanted Them as they lived where They lived, formless, ageless, waiting: waiting, but, for what? So They, some of Them, contrived Their return – to guide us, legend says, to change us… Their wait was long, perhaps too long, for the stars, the very cosmos had to be aligned aright, with Theirs, for Them to come forth again from Their sleepless dwelling to be among us, to be with us, once again. To have the feeling, the corporeal being, They so craved.

and also this one:

Falcifer is the name They have chosen. Working in secret, even now They are planning his coming. He is the Spawn of Chaos, the leader of those Dark Gods…

But in my dreams this Falcifer of theirs is a woman who has as her Vindex a man, a human, and by whom she bears a half-human child who, as her, needs the vital force, the living essence, of human beings to live, survive. I never see her face, clearly. But her smell is ever so indicative and strong, almost animal, feral like, in its intensity; but more than an odour; more than a perfume. Even now in the bright sun of this lovely hot July day I catch myself smelling this strange fragrance, unlike any flower I have ever known, unlike any perfume I have ever smelt, or blended, unlike the smell of any magical potion I have ever made.

She and her kind are beyond the words of the books of our kind; beyond the words of all our human books, magical; otherwise. Missing pages from our history, our past, for some of them have been here among us for millennia. Waiting. Some perhaps in dreams have glimpsed them or been touched by them, as I. Many have known them, over the centuries, and died because of it…..

Through her chosen one she schemes, plots, then rules, growing in Earthly influence, power. I do not know why, but sometimes I seem to see great factories; a new Empire; a country, a nation, triumphant, over others, only this time ruler of the skies, where machines rise to unearthly heights. War; deaths; suffering. So many, so terrible. More than those terrible years – that war – we lived through and vowed to never live through again… But the dreams have gone, not returned. Again I do not know why the dreams have stopped, or why they began. I am only glad, so very glad, they have stopped and not returned…..”

Slowly, Rezare placed the book aside. She also did not know how or why her own so similar dreams had begun; but hers had not stopped, becoming with each night more vivid, intense, as if the land around – the living hillfull fields, the trees, the streams, copses, sheltering welcoming woods, the birds, animals, the very soil itself – had somehow in some way changed with, through, because of understanding. Gone now their welcoming of such un-earthly darkness; gone now their beckoning desire for her to leave peacefully and in peace. Instead: only a desire, an urgent desire, through wordless words – through that very belonging with-them that she treasured, loved, felt, knew – for her to help them, she as daughter, perhaps, of their life-giving Earth-Mother. Perhaps it was then the trees, the streams, the birds, animals, those sheltering welcoming well-known woods, the very soil itself, who spoke to her by dreams, bringing such a seeing, such a knowing, such detail, as no Rounwytha before her had ever possessed, so that to her even the wind-rapping of those small bare Willow tendrils upon her draughtful window were as words, informing her of why and of what she must do.

There will be snow tonight, she knew, a journey to take her, alone, to a city where her visions and those voices said would be a young man, to help her.

“How did you find me?” Cheddon asked, as Rezare waited outside in that snowy darkful cold which had come to claim his city.

“It does not matter,” she said. “What matters is what we can do to fight those alien shapeshifting beings and she who has so beshrewed he who leads that team you are still a part of.”

Startled, surprised – intrigued – Cheddon let her into his warm bachelor fourth-floor modern Apartment whose large windows gave fine Thames river and city of London views. Then, outside, in the darkness, it was as if suddenly that city, that England, had drifted back into a far far quieter more distant ancient time: for, for just one lengthy-briefness of just three measured Earthly minutes, there was a silence, a stillness, a steeply plunging Arctic coldness, that made machines, people, stutter, to bring them briefly to a halt; to cut for one moment of Earthly lengthy-briefness that flow of electrical energy that brought forth light and brightness to human streets and homes.

Thus did Rezare – she of long greying hair, lithesome body, and sensitive, hyelding – involuntarily shiver, until Cheddon, with youthful momentary desperation of comfort, saught her hand to let her warming fingers, her comforting warm embrace, renew remind and unexpectedly arouse him as that strange seeping cold enclosing lengthy-briefness of un-human blackness passed their brief causal-world by.